Let me know

“We are a child who cannot speak yet.” We join a new community of talkers, using their mouths to make noise. Using the noises to interact with one another and make sense of everything they see, taste and touch. As children who cannot yet speak, do we feel self conscious about our inability to engage? Do we get self conscious then, as the noises start to form from our mouths that the words are not perfect, that our sentences are lacking in structure, that our voices are weak or loud?

Do we go around shaming young children for their inability to speak to us? For saying, “hold you” when they want to be picked up; for saying, “I’m blooding.” For misinterpreting and responding to the world in ways we find nonsensical, hilarious, refreshing?

When do we cross-over? Where do we draw the line between new member/learner and mastery? Why are we so uncomfortable with being new, with not knowing, with coming upon those who do not yet know?

How do you talk to a young child? You clip your words? Change your pitch? Alter your vocabulary? Censor your ideas? Because you’re meeting the child where they’re at–in their lack of knowledge, in their place of newness…

Is this part of the problem?

Inspired by Etienne Wenger’s Communities of Practice work and I guess Carol Dweck.